What would you grab?

Like most of Australia, I've been confronted with violent footage of the deadly earthquake in Christchurch.  I've never been to Christchurch, having only visited the North Island of New Zealand, but my heart breaks for them.  There's been much talk this year, perhaps too much talk, about what you would take in the event of an emergency.  Australia has been swamped with emergencies, it seems, and each time I tell myself I really MUST get myself organised.  We have floods and fires to worry about, and they seem to happen with deadly regularity.  Who only knows when the next big 'unexpected thing' would be? 

I'd take the obvious - family, pets, drinking water, my backup information containing all 25 years of the diaries I have kept.  Precious photos.  You know.  That bit is easy.  But then, it gets more difficult.

Do I keep the old books I've collected over the years?  Do I save my two daughters' heirloom knitted blankets?  Do I make room for the many old treasures I've stashed away?  Their christening dress?  My wedding dress? 

Don't even get me started on the quilts.  Do I keep the hand pieced double wedding ring quilt?  Or the one that is on my bed that has comforted me through good times and bad?  Each one is filled with memories that make it 'the' one I would need to keep.

I wouldn't worry about the UFO's and the stash, and the quilting books.  That's just all stuff.  But the other things, the quilts and the baby clothes and wedding dresses and antique books - they are memories.  Yeah, at the end of the day it is just stuff, like all the other stuff, but it is so much more than that. 

I can't imagine losing all of that in one day, one hour.  Add to that the trauma of losing your job, or your pets, or your precious, precious family - well, it's all just too much to bear.

And if you've gone through that in the last week, or year, or lifetime - my heart breaks for you.

Technology is messing with my head

So yesterday I wrote that I wanted to learn how to make my own PDF files.  I did that with blinding success (yay me!!) so soon, when I tidy up the loose ends, I'll post my own free block of the month.  When we were in business, in the olden days, I did a lovely block of the month that would translate really well through the internet.  So stay tuned.

And of course, because I had such blinding success on that little adventure, my laptop has died overnight and now I can't post the thing.  I'm working now on the clankety clank old desktop that barely has a working keyboard. 

So - please keep an eye on the block for my very first freebie block of the month.  Hopefully it'll all work out good!

Hello World!

I think I may well be the very last person on the planet to start a quilting blog. 

I don't know what I aim to achieve.  I've got many things to say and to show you, yet when I sit in front of my little computer my mind goes blank.

I've been quilting for years with varying degrees of success.  I've got so much to learn, and not much time to learn it in.  I have a busy life and I am supremely unorganised with what limited time I have.  I've a lot of goals I want to achieve, and here we are, mid February and very little of them have been achieved.

So.  In a nutshell.  Here's what I want from this year.

1.  I want to blog daily.

2.  I want to keep an organised, happy home.

3.  I want to quilt daily.

4.  I want to stop starting new things, I want to finish what I start, and I want to put it away when I'm finished with it.

5.  I want to keep a regular quilt diary with photos of all my finished projects.

6.  I want to be all things to everyone and with that, I should just wave my magic wand and it shall all be. 

Yeah. 

And I also want to rejig my designs that I once sold in a previous life, and have a fabulously clever website that you can download them from.  I just have to learn how to do that, purchase a programme like Adobe and go from there.  Shouldn't be too hard, right?

Yeah.

Gotta go feed the kids.

S.G.